Antarctic Drilling Plan Raises Concerns

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The big mystery of Lake Vostok and whether it holds ancient
microbial life will have to wait for another Antarctic winter to
pass. A team of Russian researchers left their remote drilling
site this week with less than 50 feet to go to break into the
surface of a vast underground lake that has remain untouched for
the past 15 million years.

In order to catch the last plane home, the Russians left behind a
12,300-foot borehole filled with kerosene to prevent it from
freezing -- as well as questions for the international scientific
community about whether the project will contaminate any new life
forms that may be lurking below.

"I can understand the Russians don't want to start over -- it's a
four kilometer ice sheet -- but this is a unique place," said
Claire Christian of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a
Washington, D.C.-based group focused on environmental issues on
the Antarctic continent. "You have to use the most precaution
that you can, and our main concern remains contamination."

The Russian plan to penetrate the lake has been debated since it
was discovered in 1993, and the drillers have had several failed
boreholes in the past decade. In 2007, a drillbit broke off and
crashed to the bottom of the hole. Russian engineers pumped in
anti-freeze into the hole in order to retrieve it, but they
eventually abandoned the device.

The presence of anti-freeze and other chemicals in such an
untouched environment worries both advocates and scientists.

A study by U.S. National Research Council predicted Lake Vostok
would contain unique life forms, sediments could give clues to
long term climate of the region and isotopes would help geologist
figure out how these unusual sub-glacial lakes are formed.

Despite the risks, the Russian plan to use fuel and other
drilling fluids to keep the hole open was approved by members of
the Antarctic treaty, which governs scientific projects on the
frozen continent. The project was opposed by some environmental
groups and scientists who argued that hot-water drilling would do
less environmental damage.

British researchers are using hot-water drills to pierce the
nearby Lake Ellsworth and are close to reaching their goal. A
joint American-Swedish-German team used hot-water drilling
techniques to build a massive neutrino detector at the South Pole
more than a mile and a half below the surface.

But Russians complained hot-water drilling required more power
than they could generate at their remote camp, also known as
Vostok.

Many scientists who study Antarctica say the project has become a
point of national pride for a nation that has fallen on hard
times. And of course, there's the thrill of being first.

"It's like exploring an alien planet where no one has been
before. We don't know what we'll find," Valery Lukin of Russia's
Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St Petersburg,
which oversees the expedition, told Reuters this week.

Lukin has said that once the lake is breached, water pressure
will shoot up the borehole and freeze the drilling fluids them
solid -- keeping them out of the lake itself. But Christian said
the Russians need to slow down.

Lake Vostok "isn't going anywhere and we would also like to see
what happens at Ellsworth. It's a much smaller lake it might be
good idea to see how it works first. You are going to be opening
the lake up to the outside we just not sure what will happen."